Fourteen years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Florida city's ban on religious animal sacrifice, a similar legal battle is shaping up in Texas between a Santeria priest and a city which prohibits all animal slaughter.

While the priest, Jose Merced, claims Euless, Texas, is interfering with the free exercise of his religion, the city has responded by arguing that it would be unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause to exempt Santeria from the animal slaughter ordinance.

“If the local government officers, before they enforce a general ordinance, were forced to question people's beliefs and practices, that would be entanglement in religion, which is clearly unconstitutional,” the city's attorney, William M. McKamie, told the Dallas Morning News.

The ordinance makes it unlawful “to slaughter or to maintain any property for the purpose of slaughtering any animal in the city.”

As Merced was preparing to perform a sacrifice at his home in May, an animal control officer stopped by and informed him the ceremony would be illegal. “The complete prohibition of blood sacrifice on private property and therefore of the Santeria religion inside the City of Euless serves no legitimate interest,” Merced says in a complaint filed in December.

The suit invokes the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, under which any land-use regulation that “imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person” is subject to strict scrutiny review.

In 1993, the Supreme Court applied that standard to a ban on animal sacrifice in Hialeah, Fla., finding that it was not narrowly tailored toward achieving the city's interests “in protecting the public health and preventing cruelty to animals.” Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993)

But in a motion to dismiss, the city of Euless argues that RLUIPA's regulation of land use is “in derogation of constitutionally reserved states' rights” and that

for a unit of local government to base official policy or action upon knowledge of [Santeria] religious practice would necessarily invite violation of the Establishment Clause.

The Supreme Court has not heard a case on the land-use provisions of RLUIPA. But in the prisoner rights case of Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709 (2005), it found that the law fit within the “corridors” of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses.

“RLUIPA does not differentiate among bona fide faiths,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court. “... It confers no privileged status on any particular religious sect, and singles out no bona fide faith for disadvantageous treatment.”

Merced could certainly argue that the city of Euless would not be favoring Santeria by allowing animal sacrifice since the same accommodation would be available to any sect which follows that practice as an essential part of its religious expression.

By Matthew Heller
2/8/07